Mary Ellen Pleasant

Mary Ellen Pleasant (August 19, 1814 – January 11, 1904) was an American entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate and abolitionist. She was arguably the first self-made millionaire of African-American heritage, preceding Madam C. J. Walker by decades.

She identified herself as "a capitalist by profession" in the 1890 United States census. Her aim was to earn as much money as she was able to help as many people as she could. With her riches she was able to provide transportation, housing, and food for survival. She trained people how to stay safe, succeed, carry themselves, and more. The "one woman social agency" served African Americans before and during the Civil War, as well as meeting a different set of needs after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

She worked on the Underground Railroad and expanded it westward during the California Gold Rush era. She was a friend and financial supporter of John Brown and was well known among abolitionists. She helped women who lived in California during the California Gold Rush to stay safe and become self-sufficient. After the Civil War, she won several civil rights victories that resulted in her being called "The Mother of Human Rights in California". Legal battles, though, had mixed results.

Realizing that she was in a tenuous position as a black woman who had gained political and financial power, she sought ways to blend in to the culture of the times. She portrayed herself as a housekeeper and a cook, long after she was wealthy, but she used these roles to get to know wealthy citizens and gain information for her investments. In the 1870s, she made the acquaintance of Thomas Bell, a wealthy banker and capitalist, which helped her make money and keep her riches and true financial status a secret. She spent her money, and developed the plans, to build a large mansion that outwardly was to seem as if it was the Bells' residence. She assumed the role of housekeeper for the Bells, but it was not a secret in the city that she actually ran the household, managed the servants, and also managed the relationships among the Bells.

Pleasant was likely born on August 19, 1814. There are various accounts about where she was born, who her parents were, and if she was born free or not. She claimed that she was born free in Philadelphia on Barley Street. Others state that she was born into slavery in Georgia or Virginia. She may have been the daughter of a voodoo priestess from the Caribbean, a Hawaiian merchant, or a wealthy Virginian. It was said that she had so many stories about her origins to "please her audience or justify her behavior."

After her mother disappeared when she was a child, she lived with Mr. and Mrs. Williams and was known as Mary Ellen Williams. When she was six or eleven years of age, she was taken from a household in Philadelphia or Cincinnati. Mr. Williams brought her to Nantucket, Massachusetts, to be a domestic or indentured servant to the Hussey-Gardner family, who were Quakers and abolitionists. He left some money for her education with the Husseys, yet Pleasant did not get a formal education. She later said, "I often wonder what I would have been with an education." Pleasant stated in her memoir that she was brought to Nantucket by her father, but she had no memories of life before Nantucket or why she went there.

When she arrived, c. 1820, Nantucket was in the "golden era of Nantucket whaling." As she grew up, she worked in the Husseys' store. Located on Union Street, it was run by Mary Hussey, whom she called "Grandma Hussey". Hussey was the grandmother of Phebe Hussey Gardner, who was married to Captain Edward W. Gardner, a whaler. Pleasant sought to create a better life for herself by focusing on learning what she could from her surroundings. Working at the store helped her develop a friendly manner and business acumen. She said of that time: "I was a girl full of smartness [who] let books alone and studied men and women a good deal … I have always noticed that when I have something to say, people listen. They never go to sleep on me." She was considered a member of the family by 1839 when she was taken into the home of abolitionists Phebe Hussey Gardner and Edward Gardner. Their son Thomas Gardner taught her how to read and write. She left Nantucket c. 1840. Thenceforth she exchanged letters with Phebe Gardner and Ariel Hussey until they died. Phebe and her husband Edward were lost at sea in 1863, and Ariel was also dead by that time.

Pleasant was an apprentice for a tailor in Boston on Merrimac Street, and she may have met her first husband in the shop. She married James Smith in Boston in the 1840s. Her husband was an abolitionist, and together they helped people who had been enslaved make it north to freedom in Nova Scotia via the Underground Railroad. They coordinated transportation through contacts in Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts, Ohio, and perhaps New Orleans. They were in danger from slavers, as well as subject to prosecution and imprisonment under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the later act of 1850 that imposed new penalties on those in the Underground Railroad.

Smith was an agent for The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison. Pleasant was likely to have attended Anti-Slavery Society meetings in Nantucket, led by Anna Gardner, during and after her marriage. Smith, who had been abusive to Pleasant, died after around four years of marriage. Pleasant was left an estate worth tens of thousands of dollars. She continued their work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, for three or four years.

It was dangerous work and she was harassed for helping runaways and ultimately had to leave the east coast. Nonetheless, for this work and later acts, W.E.B. Du Bois classed her with Harriet Tubman as two " women who rose out of the black mass of slaves not only to guide their own folk but to influence the nation."

Pleasant claimed, in an autobiography partially dictated on her deathbed, to have been one of the financial backers of abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. In her scholarly monograph on Pleasant's life, historian Lynn M. Hudson argues that there is adequate proof of the credibility of this claim. She and John Brown met together in Chatham, Ontario, a terminus of the Underground Railroad and a centre of abolitionist activism, in 1858 a year before the raid.

During that time, she returned to Nantucket for a short period after her husband's death. Edward Gardner had helped transport fugitives to their freedom, and he helped Pleasant manage her husband's estate after his death.

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) provided a unique opportunity for Black people. As one African American miner wrote to his wife, "This is the best place for black folks on the globe. All a man has to do is to work, and he will make money." Many Black Americans were made rich through prospecting.

Since only one out of ten pioneers coming to the state were women, Pleasant realized that she could seize a very lucrative opportunity to cook and provide lodging for the miners. There was a wrinkle. American southerners also made a run for the Gold Coast, taking their enslaved people with them. There were slave catchers and slaveholders who came looking for runaways. Governor Peter Hardeman Burnett was such a southerner who wanted to eliminate all blacks from the state. In addition, there was a California law that allowed any black person to be sold into slavery if they did not have appropriate papers.

When she arrived in San Francisco, word had spread that she would be arriving in San Francisco and she was met by a group of men who got into a bidding war to engage her as a cook.

She is said to have had $15,000 (equivalent to $580,500 in 2025) in gold coins when she arrived in San Francisco. She managed her money cleverly. She exchanged gold into silver through Panama $1,000 at a time when the value of gold was high. She deposited silver into a bank, and took it out in gold, she said that she "was able to turn my money over rapidly". She put some of her money into a number of banks. She also divided money between a black Baptist minister, Thomas Randolph; William West of West & Harper, and Frank Langford with a 10% interest rate.

She worked as a live-in domestic and made investments based upon conversations that she overheard from wealthy men as she attended to them during meals and conferences. She established boarding houses, a string of laundries, and brothels. She was a co-founder of the Bank of California and she established several restaurants, including the Case and Heiser. John James Pleasant was a sea-cook, who was often at sea during their 30-year marriage. He worked with her for more than two decades as an abolitionist. He also worked in the fight against discrimination in the 1860s. He died in 1877.

The more that she made, the more that she had to share to help people in need. For her own safety, she initially went by the name Mrs. Ellen Smith, rather than Pleasant, and was considered by her neighbors to be a white landlady and cook. She was Mrs. Pleasant to former slaves who worked at any of her businesses, which included livery stables, a dairy farm, a tenant farm, and a money-lending business. She was careful to keep her name out of Underground Railroad–related transactions; however, among other abolitionists, she was known as Mrs. Pleasant(s). Among the transactions that she made during Underground Railroad activities, she assisted fugitive slaves in obtaining safe transportation, housing, and jobs. She funded her efforts through the monies that she had left from her first husband's estate.

When she came to California, it was possible for fugitive slaves to be apprehended from other states and blacks who were unable to give testimony in courts. She became a "one woman social agency" that provided for the transportation of black men and women to California. Once there, she ensured their daily needs were met until they were employed or had established businesses, both of which she helped them accomplish. She helped William Marcus West establish a boarding house that doubled as a safe house for runaways as was her house, and that of wealthy white home owners. She helped enslaved people, who traveled with their owners, to escape while in California.

She left San Francisco from 1857 to 1859 to help John Brown. She claimed to have actively supported his cause with money and work. There was a note from her in his pocket when he was arrested after the Harpers Ferry Armory incident, but as it was only signed with the initials "MEP" (which were misread as "WEP") she was not caught. She returned to San Francisco to continue her work there, where she was known as the "Black City Hall."

When Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read, "The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help." Officials most likely believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner who had helped fund Brown's attempt to incite, and arm, an enormous slave uprising by taking over an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia. No one suspected that the note was written by Pleasant.

Pleasant told Davis, "Before I pass away, I wish to clear the identity of the party who furnished John Brown with most of his money to start the fight at Harpers Ferry and who signed the letter found on him when he was arrested." The sum she donated was $30,000 (equivalent to $1,075,000 in 2025). She has said that it was the "most important and significant act of her life".

With her fortune and the exorbitant money she made as a cook, ten times what she could have made in the East, she invested in a number of businesses in California that served the miners, like laundries, lodging, and Wells Fargo. She developed a long-lasting partnership with Thomas Bell, a white banker and investor in the east. Her investments and businesses, made her and Thomas Bell $30 million (equivalent to $879,545,455 in 2025) by 1875. After the end of the war, she invested in the same types of businesses, but more luxurious accommodations, which drew the elite.

After the end of the war, she began to identify herself as a woman of color, such as in the city directory. She stopped working as a housekeeper to have more time to spend on civil rights activities, including housing for blacks, establishing black schools, and repealing or fighting against Jim Crow laws. She established a 1,000-acre ranch in Sonoma County called Beltane Ranch (now Calabazas Creek Open Space Preserve) in 1890 and 1891.

In the spring of 1865, her daughter Lizzie married R. Berry Phillips at the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church in San Francisco followed by a reception. (Pleasant herself was Catholic.)

Pleasant lived the last 20 years of her life in a 30-room mansion that spanned two San Francisco city blocks. In 1880, she had fifteen people living in her house. There were five members of Thomas Bell's family, including his wife Terressa (or Teresa) Bell, and their children Frederick, Mary Terressa and Viola S. Bell. Aside from herself, the rest were servants (including two Black men and a young Native American couple) and a five-year-old boy. While the Bells and Pleasant lived together, Pleasant controlled the combined Bell and Pleasant money. If Teresa wanted money, she asked Pleasant for the money, who thought about it and, if the request seemed reasonable, she checked in with Thomas Bell for his reaction. After Thomas Bell died in 1892, the cumulation of events meant that she had lost most of her estate. She still had her investments, but she was cash-poor, and the courts declared that Pleasant was insolvent. That same year, she had donated today's equivalent of about $10,000 to help found Saint Mary's College.

Teresa, who had emotional and mental instability, claimed that tens of thousands of dollars had been stolen by Pleasant and that her husband had been manipulated. When the case went to trial it was difficult to discern what were Bell's and what were Pleasant's assets, because the transactions were so entwined. Pleasant could show that she paid for construction of her mansion, but she left it either because it was ruled that ownership should be transferred to Teresa or Pleasant complied with Teresa's request for her to leave the house in 1899. As soon as she made arrangements, she moved into a six-room apartment on Webster Street and began a legal crusade of her own to recover her property, including a diamond collection. The case was not settled by the time of Pleasant's death.